


I'll go with you

by magpie_03



Series: Down the mountain range of my left-side brain [14]
Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Anxiety, Caring Josh Dun, Chronic Illness, Depression, Epilepsy, Focal Seizures, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Refractory Epilepsy, Seizures, joshler - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-01-25 13:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18575602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpie_03/pseuds/magpie_03
Summary: A new story, it just fell out of me.Trigger warning for some darker bits (mainly self-harm/anxiety)





	I'll go with you

"He said WHAT?!"

Josh wasn't a yeller, he really wasn't. Mostly, he wasn't into yelling. He banged on his drums instead. The angriest he ever got was to slam a door after one of the many neurologists they've seen flat out refused to treat Tyler when he saw the cuts and scars on his arms and guessed his history with self-harm and mental illness. But this is different. A new carlessness, a new coldness on the doctor's side. A new way of saying _that's it_. A new way of being rejected by the medical system, a new way of feeling like they're giving up Tyler. On him. On both of them.

Accepting Tyler's current seizure activity as the current statuos quo: it won't get better so let's focus on not making things worse.

Josh stared at Tyler, speechless. Tyler's seizures are still as uncontrolled as ever but he doesn't go into status epilepticus anymore. No grand mal seizures. But the fear, the fear is always there, with every single focal seizure Tyler experiences. The "small" seizures, seizures that look like nothing on the outside but feel so much worse on the inside. No one can understand the sheer panic you feel when the rising feeling starts inside your stomach and slowly crawls its way up inside your body, the rising feeling that gives way to disorientation and panic once it's reached your brain. The shame and confusion afterwards. ~~_(Did I take my meds did I take my meds where am I where am I?)_ ~~The way people look. No, the way they stare, how their eyes linger for a moment too long on his body, his shaking hands, rapid breathing, his face, suddenly ashen, his eyes with that empty look that cut Tyler to the core when he saw it for the first time on a video Josh made to show the neurologist. The empty look and Josh's sobbing in the background.

No one can understand the loss of control and what it feels like to be conscious still.

"We want you to feel good. It's not me who's suffering from the side effects."

That's obvious. A doctor who makes a lot of money off of other people feeling unwell. Leather shoes, button down shirt, a wedding ring. Well-fed belly. At least someone feels good, at least someone doesn't have to worry about money.

"It's my fault, I'm sorry..."

Josh reaches out but Tyler – out of the hatred for his own body that was so much stronger than his love for Josh – flinches and brings his hands up to protect himself.

Josh lets his hands sink and swallow his tears. He can easily imagine the scene at the hospital and he can't forgive himself for letting Tyler go alone even though he insisted on doing it on his own this time. How Tyler must have wandered through the hospital halls, getting lost again and again because the epilepsy ripped a hole into his memory and his fear of hospitals froze his brain. How he must have hidden his hands inside the sleeves of his hoodie, how his voice must have grown smaller and smaller until there was nothing left except the scratching of a pen on paper as the neurologist continued to scribble into Tyler's file.

It seemed forever ago when Tyler became a patient of the neuropaediatric wing at the epilepsy clinic. Back when he was told that epilepsy is very treatable in 2/3 of cases. Back when his parents automatcally believed Tyler to be one of the lucky 70% who become seizure-free because it's Tyler. Tyler the athlete, Tyler the guy who will get a scholarship to go to college. Back when having epilepsy meant swallowing 2 pills a day and thinking _okay, this is fairly manageable_. Now it's 8 pills a day, multiple seizures a month, and no end is in sight.

It seemed forever ago when the doctors knew what to do. Now the entries to Tyler's medical file always end with the same sentence: "Seizure, psychological and medication issues remain unresolved" and everyone has a different opinion about that -- but no one a solution. Increase the Lacosamide. Decrease the Lacosamide. Keep the Lacosamide as it is and add Perampanel, Zonisamide, Topiramate or Brivaracetam. Stop the Lacosamide and change the drugs altogether. The names of the drugs that are still left to try are long, complicated, and ugly. They don't sound like a cure at all. To Tyler they sound like illnesses and he's signing up for them one after the other. This time they decided to add Zonisamide to the Lacosamide he's been taking for over a year now, the only drug that reduces the severity of his seizures but doesn't do anything for the frequency. 

"He talked a lot and he talked so quickly, I didn't get a chance to ask questions," Tyler spoke with a small voice, his eyes on the ground as if to make himself and his brain, his sick sick brain disappear. 

Josh nods. It makes him furious that despite the fact that Tyler has been with the same neurologist for over 2,5 years he, despite the many seizures he's seen, still didn't understand what fear means in Tyler's body language. Josh can easily imagine the way Tyler rolled himself into a tight ball when the doctor suggested his latest idea, the one that seemed even crazier than all of the drugs he suggested: to keep maintaining the "statuos quo," which was at least 5 seizures a month during a good phase and in a bad phase 5-8 seizures a week. That or a video EEG with invasive electrodes to explore surgery.

"At least it's not grand mal seizures so they aren't dangerous."

They aren't dangerous. That doctor obviously never had a seizure himself. Josh could feel the anger well up inside of him like a gash of hot water. Flashbacks of Tyler in the ER came back, moments when he felt so  powerless and defeated by the illness it made his bone ache. He still can't get used to the feeling when he's about to cry from the exhaustion and the lack of sleep Tyler's seizures bring to both of them when they happen daily. "That's how we live" is one thing to say and another to actually experience it. To stick with it when you're on the brink of giving up and right when you feel like you can't do this anymore a seizure comes and you've got to get up again, you've got to pick up the pieces of your body like a shattered mirror, the image of yourself torn to shreds that cut right through the mind.

"They're giving up on me, Josh..."

Tyler's voice breaks.

He wants to make the neurologist feel what it feels to be eradicated from people's lives because you and your sickness, you and your life don't fit into the neatness and normality of other people's lives anymore.

He wants to make him watch the scene when he discloses his epilepsy and the first thing people say is _so you're an epileptic?_

The first and the last thing. This sickness doesn't fit into smalltalk, it doesn't fit into friendships. It's too uncontrolled, too scary. It's too much.

He wants to make him watch the reaction of other people when they learn that Tyler's epilepsy is active - that it isn't controlled despite medications. How they refuse to stay alone in a room with Tyler because they fear the epilepsy more than they care about Tyler.

He wants to make him experience what it's like to have people look at you but don't talk to you because they're scared of your illness, scared of your story. Scared they'll become epileptic too just by listening to you so you keep it all inside, the loneliness, the fear, the anger.

Tyler wants to make the neurologist understand what it feels like lose almost all of your friends.

He wants him to wake up at night and cry, cry, cry.

Josh wants to make the neurologist watch Tyler when his mood swings and he suddenly, without any warning, changes from happy-Tyler to depressed-Tyler. He wants to make him argue with Tyler when he, despite Josh's despite efforts, manages to hide his meds and pushes for the seizures to hit because it's so much simpler to hate your body than to admit that you need help.

He wants to make him open capsules and crush pills until there's nothing left but white powder that can be hidden inside joghurt and chocolate pudding because years of swallowing medications and dealing with side effects that ranged from bad to catastrophic made Tyler fear pills.

He wants to make him have breakfast and dinner with Tyler, both meals followed by joghurt, chocolate pudding, apple sauce, greek yogurt, anything that is soft and puréed so the pills can be hidden inside the food. He wants to make him eat the same chocolate pudding for breakfast every day of the week, every week of the month, every month of the year.

He wants to make him swallow a spoonful of chocolate pudding garnished with Lacosamide and Zonisamide without throwing up. He wants him to vomit and then repeat the entire procedure – crushing the pills, hiding them, getting Tyler to eat spoonful after spoonful – because they need to be sure that Tyler has exactly 100mg of Lacosamide and 50 mg of Zonisamide inside his body.

He wants to make him wait with them at the GP's office. It wasn't even Tyler who had the appointment, it was Josh who had been struggling with a nasty flu, but it was Tyler who had the seizure.

Even though he was coughing and his head was hammering, Josh shooed the nurses off, reassuring them that this seizure was usual. _No ambulance please. T_ he first thing he says even before _we're fine_. No ambulance. He knew Tyler couldn't hear him, his consciousness was always impaired during the focal seizures, but he still liked to think that a hidden part of Tyler's brain registered that he isn't alone. That he's safe.

"I know Ty, I know," Josh mumbled and held Tyler's body, while a strange, high-pitched moaning came out of Tyler's mouth.

"I know."

In the end he got his five minute appointment with the GP, a disoriented Tyler in tow.

The GP took one long look at them. Instead of simply handing him the Aspirin or Ibuprofen he'd hoped for the GP takes off his glasses.

"For long have you been caring for Tyler?"

Josh leaves the GP, the prescription for Ibuprofen and a list of psychologists crumpled inside his fist.

He wants to make the neurologist stay awake during awful nights when there's nothing to do except trying not to cry (and yet you cry), trying not to hate Tyler's epilepsy or the fact that you can't make him better (but you do, you do).

Those awful mornings when you try to hide the fact that you've been crying again, that you haven't slept in what feels like ages because you've been watching Tyler breathe and you didn't dare to make a wrong move to destroy the fragility, the delicateness of the moment.

Those mornings when Tyler gets up to make coffee and you take the cup in both hands.

Those mornings when even getting out of bed feels like climbing a mountain because your arms are broken, broken by the weight of your and Tyler's world, the weight of your microcosm, so far away from what other people, normal people, can relate to. 

These arms aren't enough, not enough to hold on, much less hold a cup of coffee. And it's only when you try to get up and the scalding hot coffee pours over your legs that you notice the crying hasn't even stopped yet.

But you promised that you'll go with Tyler, that you'll stay with him. That's what you've been doing all along. That's what you're doing now. Even when you've got to crawl.

And so you sit.

And you breathe.

And you sit.

And you breathe.

Josh wants the doctor to see all that, then look Tyler in the face and tell him that there's nothing they can do.

Nothing.


End file.
